Valerie Gillies
Valerie Gillies
Valerie Gillies
"Valerie Gillies writes like the wind and jinks like a hare in the fields of language"
Valerie Gillies creates a poetry that lives up to Scotland’s resurgent powers.
Her language is musical, her themes elemental.
Mapping the country as she finds it today, she is alive to immediate experience.
When the grass dances
New publication &
Exhibition this summer
Valerie's latest work is a collaboration with photographer Rebecca Marr among the wild grasses of Scotland.
When the grass dances book published by Luath Press out in August.
Buss o gress / Tuft of grass Exhibition at Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney 09 August - 20 September 2025
Orkney International Science Festival film
Mark Jenkins was commissioned to make this film about 'When the grass dances' featuring myself, artist Rebecca Marr and botanist John Crossley.Read Valerie's poems
From The Spring Teller
Inscription for the Wind-Harp by Mark Norris,
installed in the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh
From The Spring Teller
Written during Valerie's time as Edinburgh's Makar
Hear Valerie reading a selection of her work here at the Poetry Archive
from Wych Elm ed. Max Coleman, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 2009. Wych Elm Exhibition: Hand-painted lettering by Susie Leiper on two matching pieces of Elm prepared by Roger Hall.
Biography
"Born in Canada, brought up in Lanarkshire, and educated in Edinburgh and India...
Gillies writes a richly varied poetry which celebrates life."
Douglas Gifford, Scottish Literature
Former Edinburgh Makar, Associate of Harvard University, Royal Literary Fellow
Valerie Gillies is an internationally known and highly regarded poet. She was the Edinburgh Makar, poet laureate to the city, 2005 - 2008.
Her poetry collections include Tweed Journey (1989) which has been described as ‘a key text in contemporary writing’ (SB Kelly), The Spring Teller (2008) and The Cream of the Well: New and selected poems (2015). Other award-winning volumes include Each Bright Eye (1977), The Ringing Rock (1995), The Lightning Tree (2002). She is a regular contributor to major anthologies.
Valerie writes in regions from the Borders to the Highlands, from the Inner Hebrides to the Angus glens, from Orkney to Galloway.
She often works collaboratively with visual artists, notably in a series of poem-inscriptions with different sculptors at sites in southern Scotland. The book Men and Beasts: Wild Men and Tame Animals of Scotland (2000), together with the touring exhibition of the same name, was the result of a year-long collaboration with the photographer Rebecca Marr.
She received a Creative Scotland Award in 2005 to write The Spring Teller, a book of landmark poems inspired by Scotland’s wells and springs (Luath, 2008).
Valerie is an inspirational teacher of creative writing in schools, colleges, and universities, and she has held several writing fellowships across the country. She was a literary arts practitioner in psychiatric and general hospitals with Artlink and is now a trainer with Lapidus.
Valerie lives in Edinburgh with her husband, the Celtic scholar Professor William Gillies. They have a son and two daughters, six grandchildren and a whippet.
Publications
"all the time I was there I was walking in your poem"
Anne Matheson, Biggar Public Art
"Gillies' poetry shows a masterly fluency with form kept taut by its over-riding themes... this is polyglot poetry, yet it has a remarkably unbookish and outdoors feel."
S B Kelly, Scotland on Sunday
Valerie Gillies' poetry collections include The Cream of the Well: New and Selected Poems (2015), The Spring Teller (2008) and The Lightning Tree (2002). She is a regular contributor to major anthologies such as The Faber Book of Scottish Poetry. Valerie has won the Eric Gregory Award for Poetry and three Scottish Arts Council Book Awards.
Her work includes many collaborative projects with visual artists and musicians, notably in a series of poem-inscriptions with different sculptors at sites in Southern Scotland. The book Men and Beasts: wild men and tame animals of Scotland (2000), together with the touring exhibition of the same name, was the result of a collaboration with the photographer Rebecca Marr.
"A poet of unusual technical ability"
Shirley Toulson, British Book News
"I like the way in which these poems are rooted in the elemental world... the craft and truth are one."
Robert Nye, The Times
"Gillies writes of place, history, landscape, myth and legend. The Lightning Tree will enhance her reputation... Its language is musical, energetic, approachable; its subject-matter, life enhancing and invigorating; its themes fundamental and provocative."
Douglas Lipton, Northwords
Collections of Poetry
2015 The Cream of the Well, Luath
2008 The Spring Teller, Luath
2002 The Lightning Tree, Polygon
2000 Men and Beasts, with photographer Rebecca Marr, Luath Press (non-fiction and poetry)
1998 St Kilda Waulking Song, artist's book with Will Maclean, Morning Star
1995 The Ringing Rock, Scottish Cultural Press
1992 Poeti della Scozia Contemporanea, Supernova, Venezia [translation]
1990 The Jordanstone Folio, with 12 artists, Tay press
1990 The Chanter's Tune, Canongate
1998 The Tweed Journey, Canongate
1987 Leopardi: A Scottis Quair, Edinburgh University Press [translation]
1984 Bed of Stone, Canongate
1977 Each Bright Eye, Canongate
1975 Poetry Introduction 3, Faber
1971 Trio, New Rivers Press, New York
Contributions to Anthologies, selected
2006
The New Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders, Deerpark Press
2005
Tweed Rivers, Platform Press, Luath Press
2002
Scottish Literature in the Twentieth Century, Scottish Cultural Press
2002
The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry, Faber
2000
Love for Love and Atoms of Delight, pocketbooks
2000
The Jewel Box CD, Scottish Poetry Library
1998
Homage to the Carmina Gadelica, Morning starWhere to Buy
If you are unable to buy Valerie's books from your local bookshop, they are available to buy online from:
Luath Press Bookshop
The Scottish Poetry Library Bookshop
Amazon & The Book Depository
Reviews
(selected)
'Valerie Gillies: Inscriptions in the Wind', Article by Laura Severin, Contemporary Women’s Writing, Oxford Academic, September 2020 Read here
‘The Cream of the Well’, Review by Hamza M Hussain, DURA, Dundee Review of the Arts, 2017
‘Locating Valerie Gillies’s The Cream of the Well: A Critical Introduction to the Poems and an Interview with the Poet’. Laura Severin, Scottish Literary Review 9.1 (Spring/Summer 2017) 115 – 139.
‘The Spring Teller’, Review by Ted Bowman, Northwords Now, Issue 23, Spring 2013, pp 20 – 21, www.northwordsnow.co.uk
Poetry in Public Places
Valerie Gillies has been inspired to create intensely collaborative works
'Valerie Gillies has been inspired to create intensely collaborative works with contemporary sculptors. The poems from these public arts installations, though included in The Lightning Tree (2002), must be seen with their sculptures in order to be fully understood, since they transform the landscape through the ever-present perception of the viewer.
In this way, Gillies finally creates an art form that lives up to the Scottish landscape's 'recreative' (rather than definitive) powers."Professor Laura Severin
North Carolina State University‘The Harp to Aeolus’
Poem-inscription for the Wind-Harp made from the wood of the wych-elm tree by Mark Norris, harp-maker, for the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.
See Valerie recite online in the film of The Wych Elm ProjectInscriptions
Poetry by Valerie Gillies for site-specific installations.
2007 Inscription for the opening of the new Edinburgh City Council headquarters at Waverley Court
2005 A Place Apart, text handwritten by Valerie Gillies and screenprinted by Evelyn Pottie for The Quiet Room, Marie Curie Hospice, Edinburgh
2002 Below the Surface, text set in Albertus and screenprinted by Brian McBeath for The Trimontium Trust Museum, Melrose
2001 Ballad of Leaderfoot, text on stone seats, with sculptor and letter-carver Gary Fay, Leaderfoot near Melrose
2001 The Glide, text in bronze, with sculptor Denys Mitchell, at Coldstream
2001 Quick Water, text in bronze, with sculptor Jake Harvey, at Kirroughtree, Galloway Forest Park
1998 Tweed's Well, panel text in stone, with sculptor Fly Freeman, at the source of the River Tweed
Exhibitions Cross media work with visual artists
2008
Dewpoint with Carol Dunbar and Rebecca Marr, travelled to Stuttgart
2007
Close, Closer, Closest with fibre artist Anna S. King.
2001
Galloway Forest Park, text in bronze, with sculptor Jake Harvey
2001
Coldstream, text on bronze handrail, with sculptor Denys Mitchell
2001
Ballad of Leaderfoot, text on stone seats, letter-carver Gary Fay
2000
Men and Beasts, exhibition with Rebecca Marr, art.tm gallery, Inverness & on tour
1999
Scotland to the World to Scotland, National Museums of Scotland
1998
Pax Romana, City Art Centre, Edinburgh Festival Exhibitions
1998
Tweed's Well, panel text on site, with sculptor Fly Freeman, Scottish Borders
1998Poems by Prescription, Artlink Hospital Galleries, Edinburgh and Lothians
1996
A Night of Islands, with Will Maclean, Contemporary British Art in Print, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
1994
River Spirits, touring Dundee, Inverness, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh
1990
Tweed Journey, with Shelley Klein and Savourna Stevenson, Scottish BordersWorkshops (selected)
Current work
Maggie's Centre - Developing and delivering Journalling, Creative Writing and Writers' Café online courses
Lapidus - Valerie delivers training for trainers on the Lapidus programme
Previous work
Artlink
Edinburgh Makar
A spatchcock town, the ribcage split open
like a skellie, a kipper, a guttit haddie.Valerie was the Edinburgh Makar, poet laureate to the city, in 2005. Her 'official' poems include The Balm Well in 2005, A Place Apart in 2006 and To Edinburgh, a poem composed for the opening by HRH Princess Anne of the new Edinburgh District Council building, Waverley Court, in 2007.
Spring Teller
"The Spring Teller has become a project on a grand scale. I continue to travel to the springs and wells,
learning the lore surrounding them and the cures sought at them."
Valerie received a Creative Scotland Award in 2005 to write The Spring Teller, a book of landmark poems inspired by Scotland’s wells and springs. She completed this after travelling to many locations in Scotland and Ireland. The collection was published by Luath in 2008.
Every spring has its own song – from potent legendary wells to inspiring new sources. Listening to the voice of each one, world renowned poet Valerie Gillies composed a new poem to fit. “The Spring Teller” records the author’s remarkable journey across Scotland, which took over three years and included visits to over a hundred springs. Each thought-provoking poem mirrors the flow of the water, from still wells locked in the inner city to the free-flowing springs of mountain or glen. In ten sections Gillies’ poetry captures the mineral properties of these springs and explores them as sites of healing and cleansing, as places of pilgrimage and modern meetings, of connection between human and nature and, through her own form of poetic environmental activism, expresses how we should preserve these natural wonders.”The Spring Teller” contains an intriguing introduction, landmark poems and a new map to help the reader visit these memorable places, while the photographs show the beauty of each spring. This book is a unique guide to the locations of springs in Scotland, their history and folklore and an exploration of their mysterious properties.
Buy The Spring Teller
Despatches
The main focus for Valerie's new writing in 2021 was the collaborative project 'When the grass dances' with artist Rebecca Marr. The collection is presented in an online exhibition. See here. Valerie will be giving readings and workshops around the new collection in 2022.
Valerie is working with Maggie's Centre Edinburgh facilitating writing workshops throughout this coming year. Residential training workshops for Lapidus with co-trainer Larry Butler are planned.
The recent Canongate publication 'The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse' edited by Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson includes Valerie's poem Frog Spring.
Images: Valerie's portrait by Lachlan Gillies / Edinburgh by einszweifrei / all other images Rebecca Marr
© 2021